by Luna Harlow
"I wish I could bury Humphrey now and not wait," Veronica said. "He should be buried with his ancestors. To wait like this is unbearable."
"I am no more comfortable with your grief than you are."
Veronica Menken was silent for a whole minute and twenty three seconds as she stared at the wall, with angry, wet eyes.
But then she took her turn for the next question. "What are the funerary customs of your people?"
To ask again like that, she must be passionate about knowing the answer.
"Among my mother's people on Korres it is an ill omen to speak the name of the dead, and all pictures of their face must be destroyed so they can safely move on to the afterlife without being tethered to this world by images. My father is a Westroian man and cannot help himself from saying her name and looking at pictures of her. And I do not know the funeral rituals of Korres. I have never been there.
"As for my father... He is a healthy man and his death is a long way off. The funerals he had me attend were lively affairs, with a high degree of public intoxication. That is not an official part of the process, merely a common addition to the funerary customs."
"You sound like you disapprove."
"I neither approve nor disapprove. To observe with bias in your heart goes against the spirit of science, and I am nothing if not a scientist." Veronica Menken was looking at her again. Did she want to know more? Solaris cleared her throat. "While previously burial had been a popular method of dealing with the body after death on Westroia, reports in recent years have shown that cremation is becoming the most popular method of dealing with the corpse in both religious and non-religious ceremonies, eclipsing the popularity of all other methods, especially in the mining belts of..."
Veronica laughed. "I don't need the statistics."
"What else would I give you?"
"The feeling of things. The way you fit into your culture, so I can connect from mine to yours and we can understand each other as people."
"There can be no such understanding in the course of this conversation."
"Oh, I see." Veronica's voice become soft, like a thinly woven old sheet, fraying at the edges. "And you must already know the funerary customs of my culture. I'm sure you've researched them thoroughly."
"It is important for me to know as wide a range of things as possible about the cultures I may come into contact with in the course of my work." Solaris did not understand why Veronica Menken looked so disappointed. Surely she had not expected otherwise? "I do not belong to the cultures of my ancestors the way you do. My culture is the space force and the Union of Allied Planets. Whatever happens to my body after death, I will be returned to the wind and dirt, and every particle that makes up this vessel that houses my mind will do whatever work it must in the universe after I am done with it."
Veronica reached out a hand, then paused centimetres from Solaris's wrist, and let it hang loosely in the air for a moment, before drawing it back toward her own body.
"Do you really believe I am a potential suspect?"
"That's..." Solaris had been about to say that was two questions in a row, but she counted back through the conversation and realised she had tricked herself with a pointless, vague question that told her nothing. "No, I do not. You have neither the will nor the ability. But you must be confined to your quarters for your own safety until we reach the station. You will not change my mind on this."
3.
THE SIREN WENT UP WITH a yell.
Around the ship, life sounds became louder and more clamorous. Solaris got herself out of bed with efficient motions and dressed for duty with haste. 0400 hours ship time. She was not due on duty for another four hours under normal circumstances, but the increasing shrieks of the emergency siren indicated that this was not normal circumstances.
She reached the hallway and the fire alarm added its wail to the cacophony.
Richards stumbled toward her, face creasing with panic. "What should I do, sir?"
"Take a head count. Make sure McPherson ensures the safety of the Nectaren contingent so this doesn't turn into a political incident."
"Yes, sir." He saluted and ran off past her.
She entered her pass-code into the monitor on the wall and it lit up into a map, danger points flashing red. The security room was on fire. The general alarm must have been raised before it began to burn.
Solaris minimised the map and moved down the hallway in her fastest stride, not daring to run and risk colliding with her fellow men.
Veronica Menken was halfway out the door to her suite, somehow unguarded. "What's happening?"
"You need not worry, Ms Menken, though I would suggest a dressing gown in case Richards comes to help you evacuate."
Veronica grasped Solaris's forearm, the pressure of her hand through Solaris's uniform slight enough that she found it easy to shake off.
"Be safe," Veronica said.
It was hard not to be amused. "Ms Menken, I am in considerably less danger than you."
The alarm continued to screech.
The automatic doors to seal off different sections were not coming down. Solaris could feel the heat on the exposed skin on her face as she moved closer to the security room. Not as hot as a dry summer day on Westroia, with the sun beating down on her skin, but hotter than anything she'd felt in service.
It was clear that automatic safety procedures had not immediately kicked in. Perhaps they were damaged somehow or insufficient to the extent of the fire currently threatening the ship. Either that meant someone who knew the security systems on the Moving Along Silently well – likely, at this point – or someone who got lucky with their sabotage. That narrowed suspects down to someone or someones who worked in security or communications, or any of the senior staff, a group no smaller than seven people, and didn't rule out that whoever was responsible for this criminal act was working in tandem with someone else.
There was no reason to believe Captain Savage or Lady Free were responsible. Both were as dedicated to the Moving Along Silently as you would expect of sentimental mainline humans who'd made their home on the same vessel for decades. Captain Savage had not fought the Nectarens in his campaigns in the last great war; his campfire tales of the monstrosities of the machine planet mentioned cruel robotic beasts, callous green-skinned cyborgs and the duplicitous nature of human men, but nothing of the Nectarens at all, and even so, not all Nectaren nations had been their enemies in that conflict. The mixed peoples of the Acquatica natural satellite had been allied with the great powers of the middle sector as far as Illvos, and at the very least New Babylon was neutral.
Who then was capable? Kennedy who usually sat in the security control room, dull-witted and bored? Dr Pill, who Solaris had never bothered to befriend or get to know well?
It didn't matter. What did matter was reaching the source of the problem and fixing it.
Lady Free shoved past Solaris, running fast. "William!" she yelled, as she turned the final bend toward the source of the heat.
Solaris sped up and followed.
Lady Free slid to her knees and skidded to the captain's side. He was lying on the floor, his torso and pelvis in the hallway and his legs in the security room, one bloody thigh pinned to the floor by a metal pole holding up the one security door that had come at least partway down.
"William," Lady Free yelled, again, and cupped Captain Savage's bloodied face.
Solaris could not tell if he was conscious. His chest moved with breathing so at least he was alive.
"Get a hold of yourself, woman," Solaris said.
"I am your superior officer," Lady Free snarled, but then her voice compressed into a sob, and she ran her hands over the captain's face, undignified.
"Then act like it. Take command of the situation."
They would never be able to chose the door and starve the fire of precious oxygen while it remained wedged open by the pole pinning the captain to the floor. How clever, and yet so thoroughly disgusting.
"I w
ill have to move the pole," Solaris said.
"Don't you dare," Lady Free hissed. "If you remove it, the Captain will die."
"If I don't move it we will all die."
Lady Free finally lifted her face to look at Solaris and give an order, like the officer she was. "Move the door with your supposedly superior strength, Commander Solaris, and I will attend to the Captain's body."
Solaris grabbed the hot edges of the metal, burning hot even through the thick wool-blend of her gloves. She braced herself, then pushed up, as hard as she could. The door scraped against the metal of the door-jambs with a horrendous squeal as she moved it up an inch, then with a stronger movement five inches, enough room that the other woman could pull the captain free of the security room. Without the pole keeping it open the door grew more heavy with its desire to touch the floor. Solaris shoved herself back so the door could close.
Another part of the automatic security finally kicked in as the electronic voice began to speak over the hallway, "...stand clear. Please stand clear. Please stand..."
The nearby monitor's map was still lit up from whoever used it last, still showing a fire burning in Communications Records.
Solaris open a channel to notify Dr Pill he was needed, and he, with a gasping voice as if he was already running, informed Solaris he was already on the way.
Lady Free was crying over the captain's body. He let out a whisper of a groan as he breathed; still alive, possibly still conscious, undoubtedly in unbearable pain. Solaris collapsed to her knees next to Lady Free and risked a gloved hand on her shoulder.
"You will need to take command of the ship as soon as the doctor arrives to take care of the Captain's body," Solaris said.
"I cannot," Lady Free said. "I need to be with the captain."
"You must. We are hurtling towards a highly populated station with no experienced officer at the helm. There is a saboteur on board. The captain is incapacitated. You are the only person who can take control of the ship, unless you desire me to declare you not of sound mind and wrest control from you. Lady Free, I do not desire to do that. Let me do what I am best at and you do what you're best at. The captain would want you to take control."
"Moving speech," Dr Pill said, as he joined them. His breathing was rough and his face hollowed out by tiredness. No doubt he was just as strained by recent events as anyone on board.
Lady Free nodded. Solaris rose to her feet and left them to attend to the captain. She had one last thing to do.
When she reached Communications Records, the fire in its pile of papers was quite small, already close to sputtering out for lack of sufficient materials to fuel the flame. Whoever had set this alight to hide their crimes had become sloppy.
But it wasn't Dale Kennedy, because he was clearly dead.
She grabbed him by the bottom edge of his trouser legs and dragged him into the hallway, so she wouldn't be the one accused of the crime. Then darted back into the room to press the button that triggered the heavy metal security door closing so she could secure the evidence, and rolled underneath the door so she wouldn't be trapped in there with it. The ventilation system would start sucking the oxygen from the room as soon as the metal door secured itself fully to the floor and then cut off vent access as well. Whatever had been left in there was as safe as anything was on the ship.
She took one last look at Kennedy's body and walked away from the scene.
From the sounds as she moved toward the centre of the ship, it seemed like all persons on board were awake. Through the transparent doors of the medical bay Solaris could see Dr Pill, his face creased, setting up the captain's body on one of the beds. Veronica Menken was rushing around the room, so presumably he'd pressed her into service as his assistant to keep her occupied. Sensible. The Nectarens were in the waiting room, sitting inky dark on the bright red couch. Everyone else was in, or near, the bridge.
Lady Free looked over to acknowledge Solaris's arrival.
Solaris stood behind her, clasped her hands in their dirty, ruined gloves behind her back, and said, "Kennedy is dead. His body is outside the records room."
Lady Free nodded again, then turned to the communications officer and commanded, "Ayla, open a channel with the station to inform them we'll be there early." To Richards she said, "Dick, stop crying until you're off duty."
It was a deeply unfortunate circumstance, and Solaris was ready to consign her entire uniform to the evidence bin and take a cleansing bath, but it felt good to stand behind Lady Free as she made young men snap to attention and steered them into the relative safety of Mid Port.
Murders could be ignored for political reasons, but now that someone had sabotaged one of the beautiful ships that belonged to the UAP there would be questions asked. Solaris would not be alone in wanting answers.
4. The station
JENNIFER LI STOOD UP as straight and tall as she could in the lift and laughed.
"Space captain, Graham!" she said to her companion, unable to contain her joy. "I'm finally going to be space captain like my mother before me."
So many times she'd heard that Mid Port Station was gloomy and dark, but at that moment she felt she'd never seen brighter shades of navy and grey.
"We all knew you had it in you, Jen," he said. "Have you told your mother yet?"
"I was hoping to put that off as long as possible."
Graham's expression was wry. "Your mother is a formidable woman. I can see why you'd put it off."
"You can say 'terrifying', Graham. I won't take offence."
The elevator arrived at the top level. Jennifer smoothed down her uniform and checked her appearance in the dark, wobbly reflective panels outside the office, before moving into Vice-Marshal McIntyre's office, the automatic doors opening smoothly before her.
Graham followed behind, as always.
Glenda McIntyre surveyed them from above her glasses as they went through the basics. "Let me dispense with the formalities," she said. "We'll have one of the new cruiser-class vessels here within a fortnight. Captain Talbot is retiring and various of his crew are being reassigned, so you will likely pick up some of them for your crew. My staff can let you know who is available if you have any requests."
"Yes, sir."
"More delicate is that the surviving crew of the Moving Along Silently have arrived. Their vessel is a ruin and their captain currently unable to feed himself. If I can, I'd like to reassign some of his senior staff to you, if you can win them over. I won't sugar coat it – that is likely to be extremely difficult. I have the utmost respect for Captain Savage's service record but he ran his ship like a cult, and his personality the centre of their worship. Currently they're confined to level 11 while we investigate who had the audacity to sabotage one of our most reliable ships."
"I see. I imagine the situation is politically difficult," Jennifer said.
"More difficult than you know. They were ferrying a small group of Nectaren traders across the sector." McIntyre looked up from her files and made her gaze sharp, but Jennifer kept her face as blank as possible in the hopes of betraying no emotional reaction at all. "I won't bore you with the details of the original assignment, but, as it ended with a diplomat dead and Captain Savage suffering from a cerebral haemorrhage, we can safely say it was a miserable failure. Section 7 are investigating, but while they do I'll leave you with these files to study."
McIntyre pushed over a beige folder, fat with papers and decorated with the faded pink, green and yellow of sticky notes.
"Yes, on paper," McIntyre said, then scrubbed at her face with her free hand. "This is the new rule for information security in this sector. I think it's nonsense but nobody consults me about these things."
Jennifer picked up the folder and tried not to be obvious about how much she wanted to flick through it.
"I'll prepare carefully, sir," she said.
"Shall I let Vice-Marshal Su know about your promotion?" McIntyre asked.
"I'd appreciate that, sir. I think she'd pr
efer hearing it from you."
"This is a lot of responsibility we're handing you, but what you did on the Dream of Adventure was exemplary and Captain Nguyen speaks highly of you. Don't let us down."
"I won't, sir."
"And Murray," McIntyre said, finally addressing him. "We have a different standard of presentation on Mid Port."
Jennifer tried not to laugh. "You'll finally have to shave, Graham."
IN THE QUIET OF THE small living room attached to her assigned quarters Jennifer didn't have to hold back her enthusiasm as she flicked through the folder, back and forth, making notes with a notepad and pen she'd reappropriated from the conference rooms on a lower floor.
"Any hot chicks?" Graham asked, from where he was hanging around like a useless lump on the grey-blue armchair that faced the door. Finally clean-shaven, at least, so he no longer looked like he belonged more in a trendy cafe in North Milton than on a spaceship.
"That's inappropriate."
"What? I'm looking out for you. You like an attractive woman." He tossed up and caught an old stress ball, again and again and again.
"Not on duty." Jennifer sighed. She pulled an untidy pile of papers from the middle of the stack and put them on the coffee table in front of his chair. "Here, make yourself useful, Section Leader Murray. You know my general opinions on things. Make some notes. Save me time."
He raised an eyebrow? "Is that an order?"
Jennifer smirked. "Now that I'm two ranks above you, you should assume everything I say to you is an order."
"I'll catch up. Just you wait." But he picked up the first of the papers and started looking through them, as she knew he would.
"You better try. Wouldn't want you to lose your ambition now."
Fifteen minutes of quiet study and Graham spoke again. "Do you think they'll let me be your second in command?"
"It would be a shame to break up a great team like us."
"They'd break up our team for someone like her." He handed her a pinned together pile of papers, a roughly assembled personnel file on one of Captain Savage's crew. From the front page details and picture she could tell this person, a Space Commander Solaris, was tall, sharp-faced, severe of expression. But that was not the most interesting thing about her.
